He recognized the vessel, flew aboard, surprised the wedding party at the altar and exclaimed: "Stop the proceedings--I'm here! Come to my arms, my own!" There were foot-notes to this extravagant piece of literature wherein the author endeavored to show that the whole thing was within the possibilities; he said he got the incident of the whale traveling from Behring's Strait to the coast of Greenland, five thousand miles in five days, through the Arctic Ocean, from Charles Reade's "Love Me Little Love Me Long," and considered that that established the fact that the thing could be done; and he instanced Jonah's adventure as proof that a man could live in a whale's belly, and added that if a preacher could stand it three days a lawyer could surely stand it five! There was a fiercer storm than ever in the editorial sanctum now, and the stranger was peremptorily discharged, and his manuscript flung at his head.

But he had already delayed things so much that there was not time for some one else to rewrite the chapter, and so the paper came out without any novel in it.

It was but a feeble, struggling, stupid journal, and the absence of the novel probably shook public confidence; at any rate, before the first side of the next issue went to press, the Weekly Occidental died as peacefully as an infant.
An effort was made to resurrect it, with the proposed advantage of a telling new title, and Mr.F.said that The Phenix would be just the name for it, because it would give the idea of a resurrection from its dead ashes in a new and undreamed of condition of splendor; but some low-priced smarty on one of the dailies suggested that we call it the Lazarus; and inasmuch as the people were not profound in Scriptural matters but thought the resurrected Lazarus and the dilapidated mendicant that begged in the rich man's gateway were one and the same person, the name became the laughing stock of the town, and killed the paper for good and all.
I was sorry enough, for I was very proud of being connected with a literary paper--prouder than I have ever been of anything since, perhaps.
I had written some rhymes for it--poetry I considered it--and it was a great grief to me that the production was on the "first side" of the issue that was not completed, and hence did not see the light.

But time brings its revenges--I can put it in here; it will answer in place of a tear dropped to the memory of the lost Occidental.

The idea (not the chief idea, but the vehicle that bears it) was probably suggested by the old song called "The Raging Canal," but I cannot remember now.